Sunday, July 1, 2007
Horgan on Sulloway
It was good to hear John Horgan @ bloggingheads characterize Frank Sulloway's theories about birth order as “slippery”. Horgan pointed out that it really isn't a theory if the definitions are always changing. George Johnson, interlocutor-wearing-funny-3D-glasses in this episode, was as usual amiably moderate, saying there was more nuance to Sulloway's theory.
Sulloway posits what Horgan called a “unified field theory of history”, explaining the past with a simple slogan — first born: conservative; later born: experimenters, rebels. First-born's Newton and Martin Luther are somehow exceptions by Sulloway's tortured logic.
In an interview on NPR Sulloway sounded seriously pinched. Sulloway is an historian of science. Third-born Sulloway also appears to be nursing an industrial strength case of sibling rivalry.